The 2020 Election and the Economy: Part III
|Executive Summary
In part I of our series on the 2020 election and the U.S. economy, we examined some of the key facts about the election as it currently stands. In part II, we tackled where the candidates stand on some of the major economic policy issues. In this report, the final in our series, we delve into the actual process by which some of these proposals could become law. We examine three policymaking avenues: regular order legislation, budget reconciliation and executive orders/regulatory policy. Each of these policymaking tools comes with its own pros and cons. Regular order legislation is the most powerful tool for rewriting or creating new laws, but it often comes with the highest political hurdles given that this type of legislation can be filibustered in the Senate. Budget reconciliation is a privileged form of legislation that helps policymakers avoid the filibuster, but its special status comes with a series of rules that can make it unwieldy for some types of sweeping policy change. Actions taken by the executive branch, such as executive orders or the appointing of individuals to head key regulatory agencies, often require the least cooperation from Congress, but their power to impact the law is also often more limited, and action taken by one administration can often be reversed by its successor.
Regular Order Legislation: The Simplest Approach
It can be easy to forget that the most straightforward way to change the law at the federal level is simply for Congress to pass a bill through regular order and then have the president sign it into law. One or both chambers of Congress begin by writing and debating legislation in the relevant committees, and over time this legislation can eventually move to the full chambers. From there, one chamber can pass the legislation and then send it to the other, or both chambers can pass their own bills, and then meet in a conference committee to hash out the differences. Regardless, in order for a bill to become a law, the bill must pass both the House and Senate, each with a simple majority, after which it is sent to the president, who can either sign it into law or veto it.
When done this way, many of the challenges associated with budget reconciliation or executive orders dissipate. For example, while the budget impact of the bill as determined by the Congressional Budget Office may matter politically, it is much easier to blow up the deficit in regular order legislation than it is through budget reconciliation, which we will discuss in the next section. And regular order legislation can much more expansively and freely change and create laws across a whole host of policy areas, unlike reconciliation or executive orders.
Thus, an expansive policy overhaul such as Medicare for All would be best suited to regular order legislation. The challenge is that regular order legislation can, in most circumstances, be filibustered in the Senate. More specifically, it takes 60 U.S. senators to invoke cloture, or end a filibuster (Figure 1). This means that, in practice, a determined minority of senators with at least 41 seats can hold up all sorts of legislation. In partisan times like these, the inability to clear legislation with less than 60 votes is one reason policymakers have struggled to enact new legislation.
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